Ten Ways to Kickstart Your Mobile Marketing Strategy

You heard it here first; 2016 will be the year of mobile! And with mobile ad spend projected to top over $100 billion this year, the time is now to hop on board the mobile marketing strategy train.

But if you’re wondering why mobile, that’s easy.

First, consider for s second that of the Earth’s 7.1 billion people, approximately 75 percent of them own a mobile phone. That’s over 5.1 billion people! Mobile is also the most immediate and attention-grabbing form of communication there is.

Lastly, this strategy utilizes the one thing most people nowadays never leave their homes without to engage them: their phones. In fact, according to a study by Morgan Stanley, 91 percent of adults who own a mobile phone keep it within arm’s reach 100 percent of the time. That offers unparalleled access to your customers.

Here are the ten top strategies utilized by professionals that you could enact today to ensure you carry out a rock-solid mobile marketing campaign this year. Use them wisely.

Strategy One: Think Mobile First

While web platforms are still relevant, mobile access sites have become the industry’s premium template for buyers and businesspeople alike.

Unfortunately, as many as 43 percent of consumer websites aren’t mobile friendly. Google even ranks sites that aren’t mobile-friendly lower in search lists, significantly cutting down on views of your site.

Streamlined mobile sites are commonplace in the modern business world. They utilize the m.tkxel.com URL to function and thus need a little tweaking to become fully efficient.

Google search rank prospects should be tweaked too, so as to ensure total visibility on your platform. Don’t neglect tablet owners, and don’t be one of the many businesses losing mobile buyers to a poorly crafted and unresponsive website.

Quick menus, response forms, click-to-purchase buttons and real-time shopping carts should be a part of your strategy.

Strategy Two: Engage Omni-Channel Marketing

Omni-channel marketing will be 2016’s buzz word—and for good reason. 83 percent of smartphone owners say seamless experiences across multiple devices is important to them.

Similarly, consumers want incredible sales opportunities linked to social media, web platforms, email and SMS strategies. But this is where one of mobile’s biggest advantages lie.

More and more, customers are engaging with these other channels through their mobile devices. Just look to the number that states that more than half a billion people access Facebook solely on their mobile phones.

And don’t be fooled by the myth that going omni-channel is only for millennials. According to recent research, US consumer across all ages own on average 3.3 devices.

More surprisingly however is the number that the fastest growing population to adopt multiple platforms is not millennials, but rather people over the age of 55. What this means is that the age of generalized mass marketing is over, and businesses need to cater to distinct generations across multiple devices.

Seamless omni-channel marketing efforts go a long way. Consumers who are able to engage your brand will stay, and they’ll empower your future mobile marketing efforts. It also offers a powerful way to reach customers throughout their day, regardless of what device they’re using.

Lastly, by offering customers a choice in how you contact them, they’ll be significantly more receptive to your messages. Remember, to reach your customers, you need to approach them. Don’t neglect the Internet Age’s biggest, booming channels.

Strategy Three: Keep Up with Mobile Email

Email remains one of the business world’s best outreach resources. Currently, over 53% of emails are now opened on mobile devices, rather than conventional desktops or laptops.

That’s a whopping 500 percent increase from the 8 percent figure email opens on mobile was at four years ago in 2011. Such a big denomination shouldn’t be ignored—and email marketing’s cross-platform potential shouldn’t be either.

And email does have distinct advantages over other channels. Namely, without the word limits of social media and texts, emails let you fully convey complex ideas that take more than 160 characters to hash out.

Strategy Four: Create a Direct Connection

Your business’s marketing potency relies upon increased user count. Direct connection, buyer retention and mobile-friendly design, when implemented correctly, can birth a powerful mobile email campaign. Make sure, however, that your email strategies are backed by concise content. Smartphones have small screens, and too many marketers have fallen into the pitfalls created by device barriers.

Here are a full tips for maximizing mobile emails:

The flip side of no word limit is the tendency to put in too much information, losing customers’ focus. Don’t give in!

33 percent of email recipients open email based on subject line alone so make them compelling.

Subject lines with 30 or fewer characters have an above average open rate.

iPhones cut off subject lines at around 35 characters so make sure your important info is first.

Strategy Five: Use Mobile Coupons

Coupons have a long track record of driving sales. But traditional coupons don’t reach certain demographics and are easy to lose. Opt instead for mobile coupons that are stored on your customers’ phones. In fact, according to one study by Inmar, over 66 million digital coupons were redeemed in 2013, and that number is sure to have grown since then. Here are a few more mobile coupon stats to convince you of their effectiveness.

77 percent spend $10-$50 more than they anticipate when they use a mobile coupon

nearly 40 percent of shoppers who have received personalized coupons, promotions, or recommendations while shopping in-store end up spending more

mobile coupons are redeemed 10 times more frequently than their print counterparts

Strategy Six: Invest in a Mobile App

Surprisingly, mobile app marketing is cheap. Expenses aside however, it’s highly valuable in terms of proposed utility. Consumers thrive on mobile apps, and the following statistics should convince most mobile marketers to invest in the smartphone paradigm shift:

Mobile Users spend approximately 89 percent of their mobile time on apps.

Strategy Seven: Allow In-Depth Feedback

Successful businesses listen to their customers. By listening, businesses discover what customers want, how to improve services or operations, and many more valuable insights.

Text message surveys are the most effective way to listen because they’re quick and mobile, and they deliver a uniquely high response rate. They also have the added benefit of automatically keeping track of all the responses. This is in stark contrast to paper surveys that would require you to input all the answers you gather into a spreadsheet before you can run any useful analytics. They also don’t require a customer to be standing right in front of you to administer the survey.

Strategy Eight: Use the Tablet as a Niche Marketing Mechanic

Surprisingly, tablets account for the highest add-to-cart rate utilities on e-commerce websites. Almost half of Internet users own a tablet, too. Tablets have become indispensable resources to marketers, and they’ve made “casual browsing” a viable solution for Internet-bound consumers. Many online retailers are giving due attention to tablets, and you should too.

Your mobile marketing strategy might be outfitted for success, but you should constantly seek new information pertaining to hot trends and new technology. Broaden your horizons, and check out the benefits of white label mobile marketing here. Stay in touch with the business environment, and it’ll benefit you far into the future.

Strategy Nine: Make Things Personal

As technology advances, more and more customers are looking for a personalized experience with you. In fact, one study by AgilOne found that over 70 percent of consumers expect the brand they interact with to offer them a personalized experience; expect being the operative word here. Similarly, 73 percent of consumers surveyed said they prefer do business with retailers who use personal information to make their shopping experience more relevant.

But to truly offer relevant messages and offers, data is the name of the game, and you need the right tools to collect it. Luckily, many of these tools exist. One that’s in common use for example are online signup pages. These are the forms that appear on a company’s website with drop down fields for customers to fill in.

But OSPs are not your only option. For example, Trumpia, a mobile marketing software company, offers a slightly more sophisticated tool called keyword data capture which lets you collect data through texts. When a customer texts your keyword to the short code, their phone number is instantly stored in your database. They are also automatically sent a text with a question in it like “Which of our products are you most interested in?” Their answers are also automatically stored in the database, allowing you to send messages or offers based on their responses in the future. You can also have this process repeated as many times as you’d like.

By offering personalized messages and offers, rather than the run-of-the-mill mass interactions, you’ll create more customer satisfaction, which will in turn boost loyalty and sales.

Strategy Ten: Let Them Text You Too

Effective customer service can be a huge boon to your company. It builds trust and relationships and helps nip problems in the bud. But often, consumers may be hesitant to reach out with a call when making their initial contact or to ask a simple question. Chief among customer fears include being kept on hold. In fact, up to 60 percent of customers who call contact centers refuse to wait for longer than a single minute. In another study, 48 percent of people agreed that calling a business can often be unproductive because of long waits.

Let them text you instead! With its quick and comfortable communication style, texting is rapidly becoming the go-to method of communication for businesses. And studies support this too, showing that over 60 percent of consumers claimed that they would prefer to use texting over voice for customer service. Texting also has the added benefit of enabling you to keep easily accessible records of your communications as opposed to phone calls.

Conclusion

These ten strategies are a great starting point for getting your mobile marketing on the right track in 2016, and well beyond that too. And indeed, mobile has quickly shredded its former status as a “trend” to become an integral tool for reaching customers and boosting sales. One only needs to look towards the numbers to see this.

And as a final note, consider the rise of millennials. This is a generation that has grown up with mobile phones, rather than having to learn them, and have an enormous affinity towards them. They cherish them, cry when they break and spend countless hours a day on them. In fact, a study by ZipCar found that the majority of millennials would rather give up their cars than their phones! Even more surprising is the stat that the majority of millennials also would rather quit their job than give up their phone. So as this age group comes of age to become a force in buying power (they have already reached $200 billion in annual buying power), businesses need to rethink further how they use mobile.

Sophorn Chhay

Sophorn Chhay is an inbound marketer, specializing in attracting targeted visitors and generating sales qualified leads. Through Trumpia’s mass text messaging and cross-channel automation solution, he helps businesses and organizations every day to accomplish their messaging goals and fulfil their needs. That includes engaging customers, boosting sales, and communicating effectively with internal employees. Watch Trumpia's 5-Minute Demo on how to execute an effective mobile marketing strategy.